A: Pickup is at the lower level entrance of the Chapel Hill Public Library on Thursdays and Saturdays 11 a.m. - 1 p.m. Please click here for further information.

A: If it’s not convenient for you to place them in the drop box upstairs next to the checkout stations, we accept small book or puzzle donations (not more than one bag or box please!) at pickup on Thursdays and Saturdays from 11 a.m. - 1 p.m. For more information on book donations, please see Give Books on the Friends website.

A: We do not take returns unless there was an error in filling your order. If that happens, please contact us at online-store@friendschpl.org and let us know what the problem is. If we gave you the wrong book, we will exchange it for the correct book if it is still available. If the book is no longer available, we will offer an exchange for a similar item or a refund.

A: If you are a member of the Friends, you will receive an email a few days before the discount period goes into effect with a code to use at checkout. To ensure that you have entered the code correctly, we recommend that you copy and paste the code from the email.

When you are on the shopping bag page, click on the link that says “Redeem”.

This will open up two spots for codes. Be sure to enter your member discount code in the spot that says “Enter your Coupon Code” and then click “Apply” to deduct the discount from your shopping bag total. You can then proceed to payment as usual.

A: The three most common problems are

• The code is not entered in the correct box (coupon, not gift card)
• The code is not entered correctly (copy and paste from the email)
• The code is not entered during the discount period (Thursday midnight through Sunday midnight)

A: If you have purchased (or received) a gift card, you will receive an email with a code to use at checkout. When you are on the shopping bag page, click on the link that says “Redeem”.

This will open up two spots for codes. Be sure to enter your gift card code in the spot that says “Enter your gift card code” and then click “Apply”. You will see the amount of the gift card (or the remaining balance if it is partially used) deducted from your shopping bag total. You can then proceed to payment as usual.

A: After purchase, you will receive an email with the redemption code and store link that you can forward to the recipient. Gift cards do not expire.

A: Make sure that you are on the shopping Bag page. If you are on a Product Page or the Checkout Page, you can get back to the Shopping Bag by clicking on the shopping bag icon in the top right corner.

When you are on the shopping bag page, click on the small “X” next to the item or items that you want to remove.

A: Click on the small “v” next to the quantity (Qty) of the item in your cart and select the desired quantity from the dropdown menu. This will update the total in your shopping bag.

A: Yes! When you are on the page for any product, just below all of the product information, you will see “Save this product for later” just over a box with a heart icon and the word “Favorite”.

Click on the little heart, and you will see that the item has been added to your “Favorites”.

You can view your favorites by clicking on “View Favorites”. You can also see your favorites any time by clicking on the little heart icon at the top right of any page in the store.

This will take you to your Favorites page. From here you can move something to your shopping bag by clicking on the image and adding it to your bag. You can also remove an item from your favorites by clicking on the red heart next to the word “Favorited” under the image. It is important to understand that items you have added to your favorites are not reserved, and we typically do not have multiple copies of books. If the item goes out of stock, it will disappear from your favorites.

A: If you want to search for a particular combination of words, put it in quotation marks in the search bar. The search will look for this exact string of words in the book title field and the book description field.

For example:
If you search…

Search: art thief (no quotes)
Result: all books with the word “art” or “thief” in the title or in the description (~800 matches)

But if you search…

Search: “art thief”
Result: one book - The Art Thief by Michael Finkel

If you are searching for a specific author, you can use the last name only (no quotation marks needed) if it is not a common name (e.g. Dostoevsky), or you can use the full name (First name Last name in double quotes).

For example:
If you search…

Search: James Joyce (no quotes)
Result: all books with the word (or name) “James” or “Joyce” in the title or the description (~300 matches).

But if you search…

Search: “James Joyce”
Result: about 8 items, most of which are books by James Joyce. There are a few other results because “James Joyce” is somewhere in the book’s description.

Pro Tip: If you want to combine two search terms and get only results that contain both terms, you can combine them with AND in the Search products box. You must put AND in all caps for this to work. For example, if you are looking for books about hiking in North Carolina, try putting “North Carolina” AND “hiking” into the Search products box. This will likely yield better results than “North Carolina”, “Hiking”, or even “North Carolina Hiking”.

A: When you are on a page showing multiple items, use the “Sort By” option in the top left of the page to choose the order in which the books are displayed on the page. Click on the small “v” sign next to “Sort By:”

This will open up a short menu, and you can select to sort by any of several options. Choosing “Newest Arrivals” will put the books that we have most recently added at the top of the page. (Note that restocked books are not considered new arrivals.)

A: Since we get new donations every week, we add new books to the store every week (as well as restocking popular titles that have sold out). The number of books that will be added depends on the volume and condition of donations, but if you check frequently and sort your favorite categories by “Newest arrivals”, you will find our most recent additions come to the top of the page. The best way to find if a particular title is “back in stock” is to search on the title of interest.

A: If the filtering options are not already visible on the left of the page, these are accessed by clicking on the “v” next to “Refine By” near the top left corner of the page. This brings up any filters that are available to narrow down the current results. Filters that don’t apply to any item on the page will not display.

If a specific filter has no values showing, they can be seen by clicking the ”v” next to the filter title. Similarly, you can click on the “^” to hide a filter that is not of interest. Note that the number next to a given value is the number of items currently in our inventory with a given value – for example, at the time of this screenshot we had 294 hardcover and 173 softcover books in Adult Contemporary Fiction.

You can also apply multiple filters. For example if you select both Binding = Hardcover and Reader Age = Middle Grade (gr 3-6), this will narrow your results to Hardcover books that are suitable for Middle Grade readers. Finally, if you select multiple options within the same filter, the results will show books in any of the selected categories.

A: Because of the way the filtering works behind the scenes, when you select Award Winners from the Front Page of the Store, the complete list of awards that are included are shown as Filters on the lefthand menu as shown in the first screenshot below. However, if you click on Clear All next to the word Filters, you can then select the individual award(s) that you are interest in by selecting options within the “Award Winner” filter as shown in the second screenshot below.

After you select Clear All, Click on the “v” next to the Award Winner Filter and then select the specific award or awards you are interested in. They are listed in the drop down in descending order of the number of available titles meeting the selected criteria. You may have to use the little gray vertical slider just to the right of the numbers to allow you to see the name of the award that you are interested in. If you select more than one value, the result will be all books that won any of the selected awards.

A: Regardless of where you are in the store, using the Search products box on the top right of the page will search the entire store. However, once you are on a Category Page (e.g. Mystery & Thriller), the Filter results box that appears on the left side of the page allows you to further narrow down your results. Remember to put double quotes (not a single quote or apostrophe) around your multi-word search term to make sure the search is identifying a particular string of text. This, along with the filters, on the lefthand menu should help you zero in on what you are looking for. Also note that these searches examine not only the book title but also the Product Details and other metadata, so it may be immediately obvious why some results appear.

Pro Tip: If you want to combine two search terms and get only results that contain both terms, you can combine them with AND in the Filter results box. You must put AND in all caps for this to work. For example if you are on the Contemporary Fiction page, and you want to find books about family secrets, using “family” AND “secret” in the Filter results box will likely get you pretty close to what you are looking for.

A: The best way to remove individual filters is to click on the word “Clear” next to the individual filters.

You can also remove all the filters by clicking on “Clear All” next to the word “Filters”.

A: The following clarifies some of the categories that you see on the front page.

A: Reader Age is based on grade level, rather than chronological age.

A: You may have noticed that the title portion of a book entry sometimes contains two years, separated by a slash. We use this notation primarily for older titles that have been republished in a newer edition. The first year is the original publication or copyright date and the second year is the year that this particular edition was published. In the example below, Moby Dick was first published in 1851, but the particular copy offered here was published in 2009. Note that we usually do not add this information if the difference between the two is only a few years (e.g. between an original hardcover publication and the softcover edition that comes out a year or two later).

A: We try to provide a little more “at-a-glance” information for customers in this way. Here are some examples:

• “(Library Discard)”. These are books that have been “retired” from the library. Most often they are copies of “Lucky Day” books that the library no longer needs. We will not sell them in the store if they are not in excellent condition; however, they will usually have an ink stamp inside the back cover indicating “Retired” and a “Chapel Hill Public Library” sticker on the back. Hardcover library discards will also have a clear plastic cover taped over the book jacket.
• “(Signed by Author)”. These are books with an original author signature on the title page. If there is additionally an inscription or personal note, we note this at the beginning of the book description (Product Details).
• “(Large Print)”. These are books where the type is larger and are designed for readers with low vision or eye strain. Typically they use 16 to 18 point fonts rather than the usual 10 to 12 point size.
• “(Large Format)” or “(Really Big)”. These books are generally notably larger in height and/ or width than “standard” adult books. Typically these may be considered “coffee table books”, but they may also include some books that are simply wider than most books. For the very largest books, the actual dimensions will also be included in the product entry.
• “(Fair condition)”. While we typically sell only books in excellent or “as new” condition in our store, we occasionally offer books that are somewhat more worn at a price that is even further discounted. For these books we provide additional information about the condition of the book at the beginning of the book description (Product Details).

A: We acknowledge that we don’t have book categories for every subgenre. Here we try to explain how to find some subcategories where it may not be obvious how we would categorize them.

• True crime - These will typically be found under NonFiction\History. However, you may also find them under Fiction\Mystery & Thriller. If you go to the History Page and then type “True Crime” into the Search box that is on the lefthand menu along with the filters (Search within Results), this will turn up most of the True Crime books that we have (any that have the phrase “true crime” in the product details).
• Performing arts - These are categorized under NonFiction/Arts. Searching on a particular performer or genre may also help.
• Gardening - These are categorized under NonFiction/Crafts & Hobbies
• Literary Criticism - These are categorized under NonFiction/Arts. The logic here is that writing is an art. Books that are more specifically on the craft of writing will be found under NonFiction/Crafts & Hobbies.